Overview
- TMZ published and promoted dramatically altered photos of Clay Matthews as part of a paid partnership, with the outlet’s X post carrying a “#ad” label.
- The Friday, Sept. 4 X post was flagged by a Community Note that said the images were AI-generated and did not show a real cosmetic transformation.
- The manipulated photos drew millions of views as users debated whether Matthews had altered his appearance and shared the images widely.
- Matthews replied to the posts with the single-word quip “Gigaclay,” signaling he was playing along even as several fans criticized TMZ’s use of the altered images in an advertisement.
- The episode highlights how easy synthetic images are to create and spread, shows the limits of crowd-sourced platform labeling, and raises pressure for clearer rules on disclosure for paid or sponsored content.